After years making documentary films to educate the West about the need to preserve African wildlife, Beverly and Dereck Joubert are turning their sights on a new target. The South African couples 22 previous films have raised awareness throughout much of the world about the dwindling numbers of lions and other big cats in their natural habitats.
Now they believe they need to broaden their audience to include China.
Leaning over the dashboard of their custom-modified Land Cruiser, Dereck 57, keeps a watchful eye on the six lions in the grass a few feet in front of him.
Weve made a mess of Africas wildlife population. Colonialism brought trophy hunting and today were losing five lions a day to poaching and hunting, he says.
Their work has focused on the steady decline of big cats across the globe. The most recent documentary premiers Dec. 1 at 10 p.m. ET/PT on the cable channel NatGeo Wild.Game of Lions tells the story of a group of young males and the dangers they face as they seek to become the one battle-scarred warrior who will lead the pride. Its part of NatGeos popular Big Cat Week.
The Jouberts have been National Geographic Explorers-in-Residence since 1999. They worry that a rising hunger in China for lion bone wine and exotic animal pelts is adding to the dangers faced by lions.
Africas lion population is already down to 20,000 to 30,000, from as many as a million originally, says Luke Hunter, president of Panthera, a global wild cat conservation organization based in New York.
The main current threat is simply more mouths to feed, Hunter said. Africa has the fastest-growing population on the planet, fueling the need to clear more land for farming, destroying the habitat lions need to survive.
But other dangers loom. For centuries tiger bone wine, made by soaking tiger bones in spirits, has been sold in China and across Asia as an elixir believed to have healing powers and as a male potency enhancer.
Today lion bones have started to replace tiger bones because tigers are being driven to extinction in the wild, says Richard Carroll with the World Wildlife Funds Africa program.
lion cubs playing
Its all bogus, Dereck says. It doesnt do anything except get lions killed.
The bones come mainly from South African lion farms, where the animals are bred to be hunted, said Tico McNutt, director of the Botswana Predator Conservation Trust in Maun, Botswana.
The concern is that bones from wild lions are beginning to enter China and Chinese markets in Asia. Once you have any legal trade, it opens up a whole illegal trade, Carroll says.
The Jouberts say they arent singling out China. Theres no one reason why were losing the animals in Africa, there are many reasons. We cant target one culture, says Beverly, 56.
At the same time, having spent the last 32 years working to change perceptions abut wildlife, they feel the need to reach beyond their current audience. Our long Western documentaries dont work in China, where young people prefer short videos on cellphones, Beverly says.
The couple have signed on with a Hong Kong film production group to find cultural intermediaries who can help them translate their award-winning stories into a message that will resonate with the worlds most populous nation - while not forgetting their American and European audiences.
Their stories about individual animals stir emotions and fertilize empathy in ways that science and scientific understanding cannot, McNutt said.
They certainly look the part to tell those stories. Meeting the Jouberts on a tiny airstrip in Botswana feels like stepping into a Ralph Lauren safari ad. Theyre all bronzed skin, khaki clothes and savanna hats. Except that they are the real thing - having lived in the African bush since 1977.
We both felt wed been born into the wrong era, Beverly says. When Dereck finished his mandatory military service they left Johannesburg to spend a year at a wildlife observation post in South Africa. We wanted to be explorers. It was almost like a gap year, she said, comparing it to the year between high school and college many Europeans take to travel.
http://www.wusa9.com
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
28/08/2025
IBC stand 5.F81
Wowza to Reveal Next-Gen Video Streaming Innovations at IBC 2025
Amsterdam, August 28, 2025 Wowza, a leader in video streaming infrastructur...
After years making documentary films to educate the West about the need to preserve African wildlife, Beverly and Dereck Joubert are turning their sights on a new target. The South African couples 22 previous films have raised awareness throughout much of the world about the dwindling numbers of lions and other big cats in their natural habitats.
